Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 1 |  Freer Gallery of Art (1903.267) | |
| Number: | 158 | |
| Date: | 1876/1877 | |
| Medium: | drypoint | |
| Size: | 228 x 153 mm | |
| Signed: | no | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 4 | |
| Known impressions: | 6 | |
| Catalogues: | K.170; M.167; W.139 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (6) | ||
Irving as Philip of Spain may have been started in late 1876. It is closely related to the oil portrait Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Philip II of Spain [y187] started in 1876. The drypoint is first mentioned in early 1877. On 28 January 1877 Alan Summerly Cole (1846-1934) wrote in his diary, 'Round to see J. who had begun an etching of Irving'. 1 It was actually a drypoint, not an etching.
1: GUW #03432.
Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) commented: 'It is impossible to say which of the two plates of Philip was etched first. Neither of them was completed, but this one is given priority, as it is a little more rigid than the other and less successful as a portrait.' 2 The 'other' is Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 2 [159].
2: Kennedy 1910 (cat. no. 170).